Chalk, Mind The Gap
by Honeybeemeadows
Summary: A Chalky Companion: Edward thought he had it all figured out, until the day he met Sparkles. Skin to rock with a fine dusting of chalk in between. Rated for various tensions, lemons and girls on rocks. I own nothing. Not even a chalk bag.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Yup, I did it. **An EPOV, because his head is just too pretty to NOT get inside. ;)

Much love for my pre-readers******, prettyflour **and****** kikki7. **I'm currently collecting donations for a parade in their honor.

**Also: I feel compelled to just throw this out there: climbing is dangerous, yo.**

Not something to be taken for granted and YES - **people die**. Please don't follow Bella's bad example, not every rock has an Edward behind it.

_As ever - I get nothing out of this except a sick sense of satisfaction. _

* * *

**1**

Climbing changed everything.

It nearly killed me a few times, from falling rocks to unbearable frustration . . . the mountain lion I'd run into last fall. Life or death moments that passed in the blink of an eye. I'm sure that a person only gets a select number of those on-edge seconds and I'd had most of mine on a rock. I'd lost endless layers of skin, hours off my life and precious minutes of sleep for this, learning something new every day, with every climb.

But, even after years spent mastering problems, warding off death and tearing my hands up, nothing prepared me for the day I met Sparkles.

* * *

Emmett was attempting to flash the Ship In A Bottle when I saw her.

Spotting Emmett was always a dubious task. He easily had a hundred pounds on me, every single ounce of it solid fucking muscle and I'd come to learn that he required an entirely different level of help off a boulder than any one else did. Jasper was easy enough to catch and steady, closer to my own size and lithe enough to control. Emmett, however, fell with such force that there was no way I could treat him the same. I'd taken to basically grabbing ahold and pushing him onto the crash pad when he fell, figuring that getting him to a soft landing as fast as possible was my best course of action.

He would flatten me otherwise.

I did the route first, administering some beta along the way and pointing out a problem spot to him once I'd come back to earth. There was a mangled crimper four holds up that bit painfully into my calluses and I'd only managed to move on by tucking my thumb into the crease first, resting my other fingers on top of it and gritting my teeth through the pain. Emmett listened and even asked some questions, but I knew he'd probably just do it his way instead.

The guy could palm a basketball and make it look like an orange. His climbing technique couldn't be called graceful, but he got the job done.

Just as Emmett started, a flash of color caught the corner of my eye and I pulled my eyes from his back to spot a tiny little woman dart by with a timid wave. Her hair was loose and covered most of her face so all I really saw was the palm of her hand, smooth and clean, and a neon pink chalk bag dangling from her backpack.

No friends, no crash pad.

I kept my eye on the break in the trees she'd disappeared into, doing a really shitty job of spotting Emmett while I waited for her to reappear. Climbing out here alone was an unspoken taboo ever since James cracked his skull on the Passion Pit last summer. Emmett and I had just warmed up on the Problem Queen, the last boulder on the trail along which the lone girl had vanished.

There was no one else there.

Emmett dropped off the rock with a huff, muttering as he stooped to dunk his hands into his giant chalk bag. The girl still hadn't come back.

"I uh, forgot something back at the Problem Queen." I mumbled, scrambling for a legitimate excuse. I was getting a feeling of dread at the bottom of my stomach that I had no idea how to explain. All I could think about was that girl out there alone and the rock cairn that squatted at the base of the Passion Pit in remembrance to James.

"Fine. I gotta take a breather anyhow." Emmett flopped back onto the pad, eyes closed against the sun, breathing heavily. For all his muscle, it took a lot out of him to haul his massive bulk up a rock. I tugged off my climbing shoes and shimmied my toes in my sandals, setting off after the girl and fighting down a feeling of panic. The forest was quiet, shadowed and calm compared to the thrumming of my heartbeat in my ears.

I spotted the boulder just in time to see her fall. Even now, I couldn't tell you how I moved so fast, but I made it just in time to catch her, setting her on her feet with my head reeling. That sick feeling in my stomach had not been misplaced. She smelled so good, clean and fresh up against my sweat and dust that I let her go rather reluctantly.

"Thanks." She gasped, face pale, eyes wide and dark. She was tiny, her head barely reaching my chin, slender limbs and delicate hands with not nearly enough chalk on them, raw and red. They looked like they hadn't seen a rock in ages.

Or ever.

"Chalk. Every time. Or at least every other time, until you build up some calluses." I spoke low and gravelly, blaming it on the nausea that had boiled up my throat and plucked her pink chalk bag from the ground. I tied it around her waist while she gulped air like it was going out of style and it was only then that I realized I hadn't remembered to put my shirt back on.

Her breath hit my skin like a blow torch.

"You don't have a crash pad?" I asked, my hair tickling my eyelashes as I fumbled with the last of the knot and let the chalk bag fall against her thigh.

"A what?" She finally looked up at me, enough for me to see that her eyes were brown but I hardly noticed. Her face was shining. Sparkling in the sun with tiny flecks of silver and gold and I could barely believe that this was real.

I might be so dehydrated I was hallucinating.

"A crash pad. Big squishy thing? Breaks your fall?" I stuttered.

"Well, no, but that sounds helpful."

_How could she not know this?_ Whoever told her that this was a good idea, by herself without the proper gear and not a single fucking clue as to what she was doing, should have the shit beaten out of them. She didn't look like she belonged out here at all, much too pretty to be a climber.

Pretty girls don't climb rocks, pretty girls stay home and paint their nails.

"What are you doing out here, Sparkles?" I asked her, voice stained with wonder.

She glared up at me, evil enough to wilt flowers. "What did you call me?"

"You have glitter all over your face." I laughed without meaning to.

She rubbed her cheeks vigorously in both palms and inspected them, not believing a word I said until she saw the evidence to herself. Her face went red and she muttered something that sounded like a bad word, or she was cursing someone named Alice under her breath, plopping into the dust and struggling to remove her shoes. I could tell it was painful, the first few weeks in a new pair weren't ever pleasant to begin with and I was a little worried she was going to pull her ankle out of its socket if she wasn't a little more careful with herself. I knelt in the dust to help her, slipping them off and marveling a little at how nice her feet looked. Just like her palms, smooth and soft and not all mangled and chewed up.

Give her two months on a rock in a pair of climbing shoes, and she'd start to look like all the rest of us.

I trailed her back to Emmett, trying to keep my eyes off her ass and failing miserably. She left with a stuttered a thank you and a hesitant goodbye that I followed up with something lame that probably sounded a bit like teasing before she left.

"What, _exactly_, was she thanking you for?" Emmett nudged me as she disappeared, imagination gone far dirtier than required.

"That's a Gumby, for sure." I watched her disappear between the trees and spent all night thinking about the way her face sparkled in the sun, wondering if I'd ever see her again.

* * *

**All climbs coined after songs:** Ship In A Bottle - Bright Eyes / Problem Queen - Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi


	2. Chapter 2

2.

I met Emmett and Jasper at the trail head the next day. Emmett was stretching out all his fucking gigantic muscles with a foot on the bumper of his car, pushing the poor thing practically into the dirt. Jasper was bent over the unauthorized climbing map a college student had designed last year, spread across the hood of his car, studying our options.

"We could give the Jailbird a shot, or Soft Shoulder? We haven't been there in a while." He had his finger resting on a clump of boulders on the very farthest edge of the boulder field from where I wanted to be.

"I think I'm gonna head back over here." I pointed vaguely to the area where I'd seen Sparkles last and tried to look nonchalant. Jasper narrowed his eyes, so it obviously didn't work.

"Why?"

"Ed found himself a Gumby yesterday. A cute one, too." Emmett called me out and it was only years of painfully failed attempts that kept me from swinging at him. Last time he'd hit me, he knocked me out cold for ten minutes.

"What's her name?" Jasper asked and I shrugged in response.

"I don't know."

* * *

She wasn't there when I arrived, but it didn't take her long to show.

She came with a crash pad this time, dropping it into the dirt with a huff and I got a surge of something like pride that she'd listened to me yesterday. She was free of sparkles, but I couldn't help that the name slipped out anyway.

Just the same way they say you judge every sunset by the first one you ever saw, I didn't think I'd ever see her without thinking about those sparkles.

I offered her beta and confused the fuck out of her, not even stopping to think about the words I was using, so used to them by now. It was strangely adorable that she thought I was talking about a fish, and I tried hard to suppress my grin as I explained the term to her. I did the route twice, letting her watch where I put my hands and feet and certain for most of it that she wasn't watching them at all she skin all across my back prickling.

She didn't make it to the top but got a whole hell of a lot farther than I expected her to, caught up on a sloper two holds above where I thought she'd get stuck. I gave her my spare jar of the goop Rose made us, chock full of all sorts of healing green stuff and smelling of flowers, concerned about how raw her fingers looked as we were packing up. I didn't notice when she started bleeding, but she hadn't even mentioned it, which was odd. Most new climbers, especially girls, freaked out the first time they made themselves bleed but she hadn't even flinched.

She hadn't said a word about her shoes pinching either.

_Strange_.

She told me I needed the goop more than she did and I looked at her hands, then mine, kind of amazed at how shitty mine looked up against a fresh pair. There were spots I'd continually rubbed off for years that were now just shiny patches of scar tissue. Others that had built up tough ridges of skin and my knuckles were regularly chafed and scabbed.

Jesus, I felt like a mongrel making friends with a porcelain doll.

She put me on the spot when we reached our cars, the last two in the lot. There was an ancient but nicely maintained red truck parked next to my sleek silver car that surprised the shit out of me. I kind of had her pegged as a Volvo type.

"What did you call me yesterday? When I was leaving?" She huffed as she shoved her crash pad into the cab and I leaned against my car, feeling guilty that she'd overheard that. It wasn't a term that I had used in a derogatory way, although it often was.

"It was nothing." I shrugged and knew she wasn't going to drop it by the way her jaw clamped down.

"Gumby." She spat, as if the word tasted bad. "What does that mean?"

"You're just new, is all. Everyone gets called that at first, you'll grow out of it. Besides, I kind of like Sparkles." I smiled at her and watched her go a fantastic shade of pale pink.

"There are no sparkles today." She practically growled at me.

"That doesn't mean I'm going to forget them."

She would always be Sparkles in my head, even when there were none.

* * *

"So, how'd it go?"

Jasper arrived with food and beer which made him my favorite person in the entire world. I'd been on the back porch since I got home, fingers tingling and head all full of Sparkles, starving and far more sober than I wanted to be.

"It was . . . good." I swallowed roughly around the last of the pizza and my mouthful of words.

"And your Gumby? Was she there?" Jasper sipped his beer and waited for my answer, his pizza sitting untouched as though he wanted to have this conversation in full before he began eating.

"Yeah." I exhaled, wondering if it was the pizza, or something else, that was giving me heartburn. I could tell Jasper was getting exasperated with my shortened answers, but there wasn't much more to say other than the girl flat out fucking surprised me on that rock today. The fact that she could even pull herself _up_ to that sloper was not something to smirk at.

"She's good." I finally admitted out loud, a little thrilled at the words.

"A _Gabby_, huh?" Jasper quirked an eyebrow at me.

Gabby's were few and far between, anomalies that only presented themselves on rare occasions; female climbers who showed enough promise to run with us boys. There was an unspoken bet between us as to who could find one first. Emmett had technically won with Rose, although his particular Gabby had found him.

Pinned up against a tree by a bear.

"Yeah." I sighed, trying not to hope too much that she'd be there tomorrow. "I think so."

* * *

**Climbs:** Jailbird - M. Ward / Soft Shoulder - Ani DiFranco


	3. Chapter 3

3.

I spent most of the morning on the boulders out in the meadow, waiting for her.

The rocks were different out here, mother nature and her elements defacing them until they were barely recognizable. The wind and rain had swept them clean of just about every sharpened edge, sanding them down to giant rounded monuments. They were scaled in lacy patterns of lichen, pale yellow and sea-foam green. An oddly burnished orange and one that I swear to god was robin's egg blue.

When she appeared I had no recourse but to call her Sparkles. I still didn't know her name. She scowled up at me and I hated to admit that I kind of liked it when she did that. The crash pad on her back looked enormous and dwarfed her completely. I leapt from the rock and told her that I was going to keep calling her Sparkles until she earned a new nickname while I took the pad from her.

At the rate she was going, she was chewing up the Gabby thing fair and square.

I debated where to take her, wondering for a split second if I should let her try Straight Edge of the Blade, a fairly easy climb with a really pronounced lip of stone that would have probably been a better fit for a very first ascent. But I knew how it was, the nemesis rock that you start dreaming about, hating on in your sleep, so I took her back to the Problem Queen, wondering how the hell I was going to help her up it.

She just wasn't strong enough. There was no way around it.

I watched her try six times, always getting to that sloper before bailing off with a frustrated sound caught in her throat. Her last attempt just might have been successful if Jasper hadn't ruined it.

As usual, he had spectacularly shitty timing.

My name came barreling through the trees and startled Sparkles right off the rock.

She landed with a heavy thump against me, warm and catching me off balance. I took one hesitant step before I set her down, leaving my chalky handprints on the black fabric of her shorts. She looked mad, but I didn't know if it was because someone interrupted us, or because that someone made her peel off her climb.

"Hey man, what the fuck are you doing way out here? The Passion Pit is back that-a-way." Jasper stopped in front of us, framed in the black square of his crash pad, his eyes dropping to Sparkle's shorts. My fingerprints were scattered across her clothing, her waist speckled with spots of white that were barely visible on her pale skin and Jasper eyed me with a smirk on his face.

"Oh."

_Fucker_. I tried to temper my urge to hit him by focusing on the dizzying thrill that prickled across my stomach when I saw the chalky marks I left on her.

"Jasper, this is-"

Uh. Shit.

"Bella." Sparkles offered, letting our eyes lock for the one of the first times all day. She tended to avoid my gaze, as though I made her uncomfortable. "And you're Edward."

I nodded and she turned on Jasper in all her vicious-girl glory, launching her response to his sudden startling appearance with deadly perfect aim. Wicked and straight to the point, all with the sweetest damn smile on her face.

"How many rocks you got in your pockets, Jasper?" She purred at him and he blushed instantly, throwing an accusing glare at me. "You should meet my friend Alice."

I was going to have to watch out for this one.

* * *

**Climbs: **Straight Edge Of The Bade - Jenny and Johnny / This Too Shall Pass (Passion Pit Remix) - Ok Go


	4. Chapter 4

4.

Bella asked me about the Passion Pit as I was helping to haul her up the last steep embankment to the meadow. I was used to Jasper's weight which was nearer to my own, and practically flung her tiny self into the air in my haste to pull her along behind me. She landed in the grass with a thud, clutching my hand for a moment, and I leveled her a solemn stare when I told her that it wasn't for her.

She listened to me about the crash pad thing.

I expected her to do the same now.

I'd been working the Passion Pit for months now and it was nothing to bat your lashes at. I scoured the skin from my palms and caught the bones of my ankles on sharp edges of rock. Left a good portion of my patience and sanity behind every time I didn't make it. I'd had my eye on the route for a while, but last summer changed everything and now it felt as though something heavier weighed on the problem.

As though there was a curse on that rock.

I'd been in Texas when it happened, climbing in Hueco Tanks and visiting Jasper's family. We really only crashed on their couches and spent our time with our fingers buried in the rock, getting wasted on tequila at night and sweating out our hangovers the next day.

The news reached us before we reached home.

_James was dead._ The cocky bastard who climbed like he had something to prove and flat out refused to even attempt anything rated below a nine. We called his type Number-Chasers behind their backs and cringed through painful conversations with them about their latest conquests. James' ego caught up with him, landing him in the ICU for two whole days before he finally died. The Park Rangers pulled out the rock at the base of the climb that he'd broken himself on. Filled in the hole with dirt and put up that pyramid of rocks instead like it was supposed to remind us to be careful. A lot of people seemed to take warning and deserted the rock.

Some of us didn't.

I wasn't the only one after the Passion Pit. Jasper was one of the best climbers I knew, strong as a fucking bull and light as a goddamn feather and I'd be lying to myself if I didn't admit that he probably wanted it just a badly as I did. This theory was proven to be true on our way back to the cars. Jasper's holler came tumbling through the trees and Sparkles followed me into the woods until that giant, beautiful rock came into view.

Emmett was half-assing an attempt up the side as Jasper egged him on.

I tried not to feel territorial. It wasn't like my name was etched into the rock or anything, but I was itching to throw a fit and place some claim on it. I was distracted enough by explaining to Bella that her current climb wasn't even hard enough to register on the scale, all while the problem I was so enamored with almost topped it out. Then had to suffer through the excruciating awkwardness that followed Jasper's foot-to-mouth moment, calling Bella my 'gabby' right fucking in front of her.

_That sparkly fucking feind was going to pay._

* * *

"How did I not know that your Gabby is _Sparkles_?" Jasper asked as we threw our gear into our cars. Even though Bella hadn't said that she'd be back tomorrow, there was some sort of unspoken agreement between us. We'd climbed together every day since we met and missing one now just didn't seem like an option. She drove off in a cloud of dust, her hand waving out the window.

Jasper seemed just as confused about her choice of vehicle as I had been.

"I don't know. It's not like I run around the woods picking up random women all day."

Jasper didn't say a word, but eyed me carefully.

"She sent the Problem Queen today," I told him as if it justified something.

"Really? And how many attempts did it take? Or better yet, how many days did you just waste at that fucking rock?" He laughed, skeptical and condescending.

"Three."

"See I - what?" Jasper choked on his prefab retort and goggled at me.

"Yeah. I told you."

We both knew that it should have taken her a week, at least. Maybe two. Definitely not a matter of days, not for a Gumby. I'd taped up her hands, worried about her soft fingers and that wicked sloper that was currently proving to be a bit more than she could handle. I was wondering how far up she was going to make it this time as I watched her walk right up to that rock and top it on her first fucking try. I knew then that she was definitely dreaming about it, working her way through the problem over and over as she slept until it was only a matter of getting back here.

As usual, the tactic totally worked and she finally got herself up the rock, jumping to her feet with a high-pitched scream in her throat that echoed all of her pain and frustration into the trees. I leapt up the rock and gave her a stilted high-five after barely suppressing the urge to scoop her up in a hug, calling her a flat-lander just to see her reaction. She surprised me yet again, the scowl I expected vanishing the instant I reminded her of how far up off the ground she was. She wobbled, skin paling an alarming shade of green and when I put a hand on her arm to steady her, she slumped.

Ended up pressed against me, her hair and skin and smell in my nose and I swear for a moment that I was just as dizzy as she was.

Turns out she's not good with heights.

_Huh_.

* * *

**AN:** Hueco Tanks, in El Paso County, Texas, is one of the best bouldering spots in the world. Birth place of our beloved V-scale method of grading problems. Legendary for its beauty and complex problems.


	5. Chapter 5

5.

I rounded an aisle of tomatoes with a bag of fertilizer under my arm when I saw Sparkles in disguise. I barely recognized her at first, out of the element I was used to seeing her in and plopped into the real world as though everything else was just some elaborate fantasy. She looked so unassuming, a girl I probably would have admired but not thought twice about if I saw her here without all our previous rock-themed interactions. I watched her for a while, tailing her through the nursery from a safe distance away. Her cart was already overflowing with a colorful variety of plant life, and she stood in one spot for a while with a pot in each hand, looking confused before I finally worked up the courage to talk to my fairy-tale in real life.

I hoped she wouldn't disappear.

"Hey there, Sparkles. It's about time we met in the real world."

Bella gasped when I spoke and whirled to face me, blushing for some reason. She'd straight up dropped one of the pots and was now clutching the other up against her stomach. Her fingers, usually the part of her I found the sexiest covered in chalk and bruises and blood, were scrubbed clean and topped with fancy painted nails that looked out of place on her newly worn hands.

"Hi." She shuffled her feet and I reached forward to pull one of her hand towards me. While her skin looked red around her cuticles, it was the hardened sheen of painted nail that had me worried.

"What did you do to your hands?"

"I was threatened with death and dismemberment." She laughed even though she sounded completely serious and I knew instantly we were talking about Alice with the glitter. I clutched Bella's hand in mine, studying this new novelty. The edges of her nails extended way past the ends of her fingers and I shuddered inwardly, thinking about how terrible it would feel to scrape them up against a rock, your entire body weight on that tender attachment.

Not having arms would suck too, but ripping off your nails almost seemed worse.

"That would have made climbing hard, yes, but these might make it harder." I pressed my thumb down over one of those painted nails and Sparkles opened her mouth to say something when another tiny girl, this one with short black hair and wearing what appeared to be a tutu came bounding around the corner.

"Hey Bell- . . . Well, _hi_ there." The girl took one look at me and forgot Bella was even there, I swear. She pranced over to us, looking like a four year old at a ballet recital who just got hopped up on a double dose of estrogen.

"Alice." Bella snatched her hand from mine, clutching it in her other hand as though I'd burned her and breathing raggedly.

"This is Alice? I've heard so much about you."

I inspected Alice a little closer, every detail only confirming that Jasper would be a wreck if he ever met her. Her top was a pale pink sweater, soft and light and woven through with a silver thread. The tutu didn't jut out at her hips like a legit one, but fell loosely from her in a puffy fluff of pale purple and blue and white. Her tights were spangled with tiny diamond sequins, her shoes looked like some first grader's glitter-dunked art project, and even her purse was covered in an iridescent flurry of light.

Jasper was totally fucked.

"You have not. You've just heard me complain about her." Bella grumbled and her eyes suddenly narrowed, a look I'd come to dread just a little. It meant that she was being far too smart for her own good and was probably piecing something together that I wouldn't like at all.

"What's a Gabby, anyway?" She poked her chin out and straightened her spine, giving her a couple of inches but not enough to even make it to my nose. Despite her lack in height, she was a little terrifying when she was mad.

"I thought it was Gumby?" Alice asked and goddamn it, they'd been talking about me.

"It was." Bella huffed at Alice without taking her eyes off me. "Now it's Gabby. Whatever that means."

"It just means that you have potential." I shrugged to hide the fact that my ears were burning and I knew that she'd take it the wrong way if I told her what that word meant.

"And?" Bella pressed, stubborn as a fucking rock.

"And?" I shook my head at her, hoping she'd just drop it, but she just stuck her chin out farther.

Fine_. Fuck._

"And you're a girl. So what? I didn't think that part was important, but you made me say it out loud."

"And I'm _yours_, huh?"

My stomach bottomed out clear to the soles of my feet when she said those two words, strung together like beads on a string and rubbing up against one another. I'm yours. I managed to nod and before I knew what was happening Bella had said goodbye and was dragging Alice away.

"That is the guy you met climbing rocks?" I heard Alice squeal and Bella glanced back over her shoulder at me just before they rounded the all those burning red tomatoes and disappeared.

I swear to god she was smiling.


	6. Chapter 6

6.

Three weeks later, Bella on-sighted the Lock and Key.

It was a tricky climb, one that she picked out, even though I tried to talk her into something a little more sensible. It took her a single day to send the Straight Edge Of The Blade, four days to figure out the Mind the Gap and she flashed the Modern Man's Hustle with only the barest of beta from me.

Right now, she was stuck.

"Peel off." I called up to her, hands cupped around my mouth. Part of the reason I didn't like this climb was that it got her so far up off the ground. She was hovering well over my head and if she looked down now, that vertigo thing was bound to catch up with her.

"Will you just speak in normal human words, _please_. I can't understand a fucking thing you say when you talk in tongues." She hissed, voice muffled against the rock.

I'd only come to notice how strangely we talked after Bella showed up. I regularly used terms that felt completely natural to me, words I'd said a million times out here and that had been understood by everyone around me, but would confuse her none the less. We had an awful lot of slang, though it was mostly when she was stuck on the face of a rock and I was trying to beta her through it that she would get frustrated with me. Like now.

"Just let go, Bella." I called up to her, resorting to layman's terms.

"I'm not gonna just let go."

She had a stubborn streak that ran as deep as a vein of marble through a chunk of granite. Embedded and never coming loose. It probably helped her, the absolute unwillingness to fail spurring her onward, and I spent most of our time together trying not to be completely amazed at how fast she was picking this up. Her movements were becoming more fluid, less awkward and a bit more confident with each problem she completed. She could pull on her shoes with ease now and had even figured out how to tape up her own hands, a trick that took me years to figure out how to do solo.

Those taped fingers were currently groping blindly for the next hold, which was easily a foot out of her reach.

While I had been able to reach the spot easily, her short stature was working against her this time, setting down a one-shot in the middle of her climb that hadn't been there for me at all. This was one of those moves where you have only one chance to get it right or you'd lose it all and come tumbling back to earth. She was stuck at what I considered to be the hardest part, fingers locked in a gaston hold, tucked sideways into a vertical lip of stone and her toe cammed into a crack in the rock that pulled her knee up to her hip. Spread-eagle against the stone. She was still searching for that hold, no idea that it was way too far above her.

I'd need to show her how to dyno before she tried this one.

"It's too far." I called up at her, taking a step back and readying myself for her to bail off the rock, which meant that I had a decent view of what happened next. Even though I saw it, I still don't think I believe it actually happened. I swear she straight up sunk her fingers right into the rock, as though it was really made of sand and not solid earth.

Just pushed them into the stone like she had magical super powers and could turn concrete to liquid.

She used her impossible grip on the stone to haul herself upward, that stubborn thing kicking in again and propelling her to the top. I scanned the rock where her hand had been, looking for the soft spot she must be leaving behind and saw it, dumbfounded all over again. I remembered the hole, but only fleetingly because I wouldn't have been able to shove my pinky in there, let alone enough of a stronger finger for it to be of any use to me. I couldn't wrap my head around what I had just seen, still sort of sure that I'd seen her set her fingers into the stone as easily as dipping her hand into water.

If I didn't believe that she might be too good to be real, I fucking believed it now.

* * *

Jasper was being a total dipshit when we found him.

Nearly six feet off the ground and well beyond the edge of his crash pad without a spotter in sight. He knew better.

"You need a spotter. That's too Highball to do on your own." I tried not to sound like too much of an asshole, but it didn't work and I practically growled at him. His mouth tightened but he didn't respond. Everyone knew that James might have been ok if he'd had just bothered to bring someone with him. That self-righteous-ego thing must mean that you're above and beyond such trivialities, but lying in a pool of your own blood for a couple of hours before someone stumbles across you is a great way to sign your own death warrant, if you asked me.

"Emmett's climbing with Rose on Coffin Nails and you've been off with Sparkles here, doing god knows what." Jasper shrugged in defiance, silently calling me and Emmett out for ditching him.

Not only had Jasper on-sighted Coffin Nails, but it was a route he placed himself after lots of that silent-staring thing he always did before he climbed. It was no wonder he was feeling left out, not wanting to revisit his old route just yet and both of his boys off with their respective Gabby's.

"She topped the Lock and Key." I tipped my head toward Bella and saw the instant change in him, his eyes bulging in her direction.

"The Lock and Key?" He gaped at her, clearly impressed, and I saw Bella's face do more of that scrunched up thing it did when she was angry or frustrated. So fucking cute.

"On-sight." I couldn't help but grin like a fool.

"Dang, honey. I didn't think you had it in you."

There are some climbers who wouldn't have given her the on-sight, but I couldn't help myself. Admittedly, I had offered her something that qualified as beta, even telling her that there was crux somewhere in there would be considered by most to be a disqualification. However, she'd soundly refused any of my help and flat out told me she wanted it for herself.

Jutted jaw and all.

* * *

**Climbs:** Lock & Key - The Whispertown 2000 /Modern Man's Hustle - Atmosphere / Mind the Gap - Calexico / Coffin Nails - Atreyu


	7. Chapter 7

6.

Jasper met Alice the day I finally topped the Passion Pit and he was just as fucked as I predicted he'd be.

Struck dumb enough that he missed my ascent, something I wasn't entirely sure I was going to ever be able to forgive him for. It was probably because she showed up in a costume that put the outfit I'd seen her sporting in the nursery to shame. This one looked like the costume from a play about small singing forest creatures and an orphan who is raised by talking flowers. There was moss-green fluff around her waist and I swear she super-glued the entire fake flower section of the craft store to her top. She was wearing black boots which protected her kneecaps but kind of made her look like a land-stranded pirate and marched right up to Jasper with an irritated smile on her face as though she'd just spent the last hour searching the woods for him.

"Look at what I just found." I saw her hold her hand out but was too far away to see what she was holding. It wasn't until I was back on the ground that I spotted it, a grey rock flecked with spots of silver and an odd red color that reminded me strangely of blood. I wondered if Bella had told Alice about Jasper's sparkly rock fetish, or if her own had taken over.

Those two were destined for each other, no doubt.

Jasper's suggesting of campusing that lip and ascending from the right side rather than the left had been a stroke of genius, but I wasn't going to tell him that. I barely remembered a single moment of my climb from the time I set my fingers against that jutting face of stone until the moment I stood upright on the rock. A surging wave of fear had washed through me that I fought hard to put away. I was about to dangle myself out nearly ten feet off the ground and I knew for certain - even though I really didn't - that this was probably where James had fucked himself up. The entire lip of stone a series of dead-point holds, delicate spots along the stone that you either found, or you didn't.

Not here, not there, but right there.

And only there.

I wanted to try it again as soon as I was done but there was so much blood pumping through me, trailed by varying waves of anxiety and exhilaration that my muscles feel loose and flaccid. There was no way I was climbing again today and it looked as though I wasn't the only one. Jasper was seemingly shutdown as well, too enamored with Alice to pay attention to much else.

I took Bella back to her current problem, though I tended to avoid the climbs wedged up against the base of the cliff, and for good reason. Nothing around here was stable enough to rely on and every so often you could hear the far away noise of a rock falling, miniature landslides that sent tumbling bits of scree hurtling down the steep slide area. I hadn't seen anything larger than a basketball fall from the cliff, but considering the size of the boulders we climbed, it was not improbable that something bigger wasn't next.

The fresher rock, newly fallen, had edges that were much sharper than the older residents back in the trees and I warned Bella to test each hold before putting her full weight on it, worried she might slice right through her hand.

That didn't turn out to be her problem though, it was her clothing that caught her up. The whisper thin cotton t-shirt she had knotted at her waist, a triangle of skin flaunting the two dimples at the base of her spine. It was snagging against the rougher rock, holding her back and even though I'd been half naked in front of her more than half of the time, I still hesitated to lure her out of her own clothing.

Not that I didn't want to see it, because I did.

I just didn't think she'd go for it. But once again, the girl was chock fucking full of surprises.

"Take this off. It's snagging on the rock." I fingered the hem of her t-shirt, watching in equal parts disbelief and fascination as she stripped it off. She had a sports bra on, one cut down low to display the soft spot of skin between her tits and laid in a delicate crisscross of straps across her back. In her tiny shorts, lycra and skin tight with nearly every inch of her legs on display, I could almost imagine her naked.

_Cut it out, Cullen._

She made it further up without her shirt on but the rock started to gently overhang on itself, the wall looming out over the ground and I saw her falter as the angle shifted. She'd never tried anything with such a slant to it and I could sense her unease from the way her breath stopped up in her chest. Just as she moved to set her hand into the next hold, I put my fingers lightly against the skin on her back to give her some reassurance that I was there if she needed it.

She fell almost instantly.

Back to my chest in a searing flash of heat.

I set her down and pulled away, searching through my bag for my brush to disguise how flustered I felt all of a sudden, meaning to clean up that hold for her. My skin was flaming as I scrambled up to the hold with the brush between my teeth. The rock out here needed a little extra attention, and she'd responded so reflexively the moment her fingers touched that next hold, pulling her hand from the rock with a sudden jerk that I was sure meant she had put them down on something sharp. I dipped the toothbrush in my chalk bag and started rubbing at the surface when Bella spoke up.

"You climb like a mountain lion."

Considering the mind-numbing beauty of that wild creature I'd spent a second or two face to face with, sure for a moment that I was talking to God, I took it as a compliment.

"Well, you climb like a ballerina." I responded, fully appreciating the fact that she damn near danced up half the rocks she climbed.

"I do not."

"Yeah, you do. Just like Rose. It must be a girl thing."

* * *

"What are you daydreaming about, Doll-face?" Rose nudged me at the dinner table, using the name she herself had bestowed upon me. I hated it but didn't have much say in the matter. No one did when it came to Rose. When she called tonight and demanded that I let her feed me a decent meal, I couldn't say no.

"Sparkles." Emmett grinned at me from around his fork.

"Who or what is a Sparkle? Is that some secret code word?" Rose asked, eyes bouncing between me and Emmett. She knew us too well.

"His Gumby." Emmett snickered and I tried to kick him in the shin but missed and smashed my toes against the leg of the table instead. Ow.

"No, his _Gabby_." Jasper replied before I even had a chance to get over my foot. "She on-sighted the Lock and Key."

All three of them turned to stare at me.

"It's true." I shrugged. Rose smiled at me, a girl who launched herself into sister mode precisely four days after I met her and she winked in my direction.

"I want to meet this _Sparkles_. She sounds like she's just what you need."


	8. Chapter 8

8.

Rose got her wish the next day, in a move that I'm certain was calculated.

Bella was determined to send Damned If She Do, even if it meant leaving her palms behind. I helped her over the last of the tumbled rocks that were crushed up against the tree line and all three of them were there already, as though we were the ones late to the party. I tried not to groan and trailed Bella up the slope, thoroughly enjoying the view as I trudged behind her, unable to remember if I'd accidentally slipped at dinner last night and mentioned our destination.

They certainly weren't here for their own benefit. The route was far below Jasper's skill level and Emmett was basically as tall as the rock itself.

He was currently assisting Rose over the last lip with his giant paw on her ass.

I introduced the girls and of course Rose dropped the Sparkle thing, just as bad as a guy. She also called me a shit-head, which she tended to do a lot lately, courtesy of Emmett. He was a bad influence. She stumbled over herself when she mentioned James, her eyes launching far beyond Emmett on the rock in front of us and landing all the way down there at that rock cairn holding court at the base of the Passion Pit. She had only just begun climbing with us when it happened and I thought that she might be forever scarred by the ordeal. Her climbing took on a tone of cautious contemplation afterward that she still hadn't quite shaken herself of.

Which made Bella's comment about the gazelle spot fucking on.

Rose climbed like a animal somewhere toward the bottom of the food chain. A golden, wide-eyed creature, alert to every errant noise and ready to bolt at a moment's notice. Timid, watchful bursts of speed, always taking careful stock of her surroundings and picking her way carefully up the rock, her moves alluding to the fact that she knew full well that every single one could be her last. It sort of alarmed me that Bella saw the connection before I did, but now that she mentioned it, I couldn't see Rose any other way.

Which really made me start to wonder about Bella.

She was a freak accident. It was the only way I could explain her sudden appearance and what it had done to my head. I used to come out here to clear myself, drain away the restless anxiety in a purge of skin, but lately I was leaving as cloudy as ever. I used to climb for the challenge of it, the endurance and even for the pain. Now, I was content to stand back all day, lounge in the sun and watch the girls work their problem in a scant amount of clothing. I used to avoid other climbers and hardly paid attention to the stray girls who wandered across us, hoping to latch on.

Now, instead of dreaming about rocks in my sleep, I was dreaming about her.

The girl was fucking hot.

I didn't want to admit it, but it was the damn truth. I would have liked to say that it was her skill, her easy laugh and her determination, that I was falling for, which I was. I wanted to tell you that it was those long-ago sparkles, which I sorely missed. But dear lord, in all honesty, she had a rack to die for. And big bottomless brown eyes and too much hair and roughened fingers dipped in chalk. I was done for.

I could barely think about her decently anymore, every thought stained with ferocious want and my imagination warped us into all sorts of compromising positions. When she offered to spot me while I gave the Passion Pit another go, even that sparked one of my more vivid hallucinations. Pinning her to my crash pad. Dusting every inch of her skin with my chalky fingers.

Jasper caught me staring at her ass.

Four times.

* * *

**Climb:** Damned If She Do - The Kills


	9. Chapter 9

9.

Bella could get her whole entire fist into a crack I could only slip into up to the base of my fingers.

She wanted to try an under-hang climb, even though there was no way she'd be strong enough to hold herself up for more than ten seconds. I indulged her, doing more and more of that lately and brought her to the Tiger, an easy climb that started low but soon pulled itself over the face of the boulder to a more traditional route. I taped her up as best I could, padding her knuckles and already sort of knowing that this was a bad idea.

She referenced one of the best movies ever filmed and _yes_, I sort of fell in love with her for it.

She defied all odds, solidly surprising me yet again by pulling herself along that crack like a fucking lizard for almost a full minute before she dropped. She was glowing - I shit you not - even in the shade. I watched her wince as she stretched out the fingers of the hand she had wedged up in there, sure that the joints were aching from the pressure. I sat beside her and pulled the tape off in a slow peel, massaging the tender muscle and delicate bones until her fingers hung limp. I pulled each one out slowly, her joints shifting under my fingers and when I glanced over at her, she was lying on the mat with her face turned away.

Everything went to complete shit when I took my turn.

Even though I didn't want her to spot me, even though I _told_ her that I would crush her, she went and did it anyway. Saved my head from a rock with her hand and I knew the moment I tugged her toward me and took a good look at it that our climbing was done for the time being. It was already starting to discolor and I doctored it up the best I could with Rose's green goop and my lukewarm water bottle.

One look at the gear shift of her truck, sprouting clear up from the floor on a rusted lever and I knew there was no way she'd be able to get herself home. We threw her gear in the back, tying it down with a stray piece of rope. The truck rumbled to life like an ancient bear and growled down the highway, lumbering along as though it had nowhere important to be.

I called Jasper once we were on the road, kind of enjoying the experience.

"Pick you up where?" Jasper sounded distracted.

"Bella's."

"You mean _Sparkles_?"

"Dude, I . . . _You_ . . . Just-" I stuttered, really hoping that the noise the truck was making had drowned this conversation out. "Can you come get me, or not?"

"Yeah, yeah. Calm down. Give me ten."

The only writing utensil in Bella's truck was an ancient felt tipped marker and I wrote my phone number on her forearm, using up practically the entire length. I made her promise on pain of death to call me the moment she woke up. Her hand looked bad and I knew it would be worse tomorrow. I had the nagging feeling that it might deserve an xray, but figured that we could make that decision tomorrow.

"What was that all about?" Jasper asked as I flopped into his front seat.

"Nothing. She just couldn't drive her truck home."

"Why's that?" He prodded me, probably wanting me to tell him that we'd fucked each other up against the Problem Queen.

"Dude, fuck off. Just take me to my car. I need a fucking beer." I huffed, irritated and strung tight as a violin, fighting back that urge I'd had to use my mouth instead of my hands when I was tugging on her fingers, sucking on her knuckles until the joints straightened. Jasper snorted at my petulant response and cocked an eyebrow out the windshield.

"Sounds to me like you need a cold shower, Doll-face."

* * *

**Climb:** Paper Tiger - Beck


	10. Chapter 10

10.

I waited all morning for Bella to call and ended up at her door when she didn't.

Nine is late for me. Apparently not for her.

She answered it in a flurried huff of irritation, wearing nothing but little black panties and tank top that was basically see-through. She flushed when she laid eyes on me and barely gave me a chance to get a good look at her before she was pushing me out the backdoor and darting up the stairs. Alice was lounging in a padded love-seat on the deck, wrapped up in a flowered robe with a coffee mug secure in both hands, the little roof over our heads shielding us from the piercing morning sun.

"Hi." She sounded surprised to see me. I shoved my hands in my pockets, feeling uncomfortable.

"Hey. Alice, right?"

"Yes. And you're Edward. The _rock climber_." She said it like it meant something else entirely. "Are you taking Bella out with you today? Maybe I could tag along?"

"Uh, no," I stammered. "She fucked up her hand yesterday. I'm just here to check on her."

Alice's eyes narrowed at me and she glanced toward the open doorway as though she was checking for Bella. Her voice lowered and she studied my face, trying to figure out whether to trust me or not.

"You take care of her out there, right?"

"I would move fucking rocks for that girl." I said it without even thinking, kind of surprising myself. Boulders.

If Alice had any more to say on the topic, Bella's arrival cut her off. She did glare at me a little over Bella's injured hand however, and demanded an ice pack, which I fully agreed with. Bella's palm was now stained an ugly red, a stigmata in her skin and the back of her hand was no better. She pulled an old faded quilt from the house and we laid on it for most of the day, lounging in the sun while she let me fawn over her injury.

It was the only part of her that felt like I had some clearance to touch.

Even though I spent all night smearing my chalk covered fingers across her skin.

I put my house-climbing skills to use just to see the look on her face and she certainly didn't disappoint. She watched me with something close to horror as I leapt up the side of the house and lounged on the porch roof like a cat in the sun. The siding had proven to be deceivingly easy to climb, a heavy jutting lip of plastic interlocking each sheet that my fingers slipped perfectly into. I knew a guy, Felix, who exclusively climbed man-made objects, calling it "_buildering_" with a laugh as though it was all a big joke. I'd gone out with him a few times but missed the quiet simplicity of the forest.

Choking on exhaust fumes and fending off security guards proved to be too much for me.

I leapt into the trees from the porch, ignoring the girl's frantic calls and kicked off my shoes, letting the soles of my feet do the handiwork and I padded softly along the limbs like I was a predator stalking something small and helpless. Alice was below me in a halo of frilly skirt, distracted by the strawberries and I briefly thought about dropping down on her.

I'm sure that girl has a fantastic scream.

My ringing phone summoned me back to the grass instead and I fell down next to Bella in a crouch. Her dress was awesomely short, a tormenting distraction all damn day and it only rode up further when she sprawled out on the blanket. Climbing the house had partly been about putting some space between us, my head on overload from the close proximity and my dick aching to rub up against her. I shoved my hand into my pocket to readjust myself and before I pressed the button to pick up Jasper's call, I noticed that I'd missed five others.

All from him.

"Where the fuck are you? Are you climbing?" Jasper huffed into the phone.

"No, I'm shutdown today. Bella fucked up her hand."

"How?"

"Spotting." I glanced over at Bella, dress skimming her thighs and her arm thrown over her eyes. I tried not to ogle the hint of black lace showing at her hip and attempted to pay attention to Jasper instead.

"Spotting _who_? You?" He was fully aware that Bella shouldn't be spotting anyone really, much less someone my size, and I couldn't help that I growled with latent frustration into the phone.

"Yeah, _me_. Who the fuck else would it be?" My eyes trailed back to her in that barely decent dress and she caught me this time, her gaze finding mine. Shit. Jasper was asking about Alice and I tore my eyes off Bella's underwear to scan the yard for his own sparkly paramour instead, finding her still crouched in that patch of strawberries.

"Are you sure she's there?" Jasper asked again and I rolled my eyes.

"Yes, she's here."

"You're sure?"

"They live right next to each other and I'm watching her stuff her face with strawberries, so yeah. I'm sure." I pocketed my phone before he could irritate me any more and glanced over at Bella. She was staring at me.

"Jasper's coming over." I mumbled.

"Good. He can entertain Alice."

Alice squealed from the flower bed, mouth full of strawberries.

* * *

I wasn't lying when I told Bella that she was different.

Special in a way that I hadn't quite figured out, and unnervingly adept. I didn't know if I could call it talent, this skill she seemed to have buried in her fingertips, but only because the word didn't feel as though it did her justice. This might have been something that she was born with, for all I knew. Climbing was a sport of frustration dotted with brief moments of success, the high of which wore off completely before the next hit came along.

Not Bella.

She just kept propelling herself forward, her trajectory set high and wide and the truly interesting part was that most of the time, she succeeded. There was no awkward beginning as most of the rest of us suffered through, the constant blisters and overwhelming feeling of failure. None of the excuses or evasion tactics that we'd all tried on for size to get out of a day sure to be full of pain and anxiety.

Instead, she'd taken one sly side-long look at a rock and morphed right into a phenomena. A ballerina, slim and delicate and frighteningly easy to underestimate. Her limbs were graceful yet strong enough to hold her on a rock, hands small enough to fit in the smallest of cracks yet still strangely fragile under the chalk and blood and hardening skin. Her short stature completely belied her strength and she looked as though she belonged in an entirely different kind of shoe.

Pink ones, with trailing ribbons and a flattened toe.


	11. Chapter 11

11

Jasper had been climbing at a boulder field up north that was loosely coined Sailing Hawks, mostly for the high end subdivision that sprouted up around it and somewhat for the hawks that used to frequent the area. He'd been worrying himself over a problem there, sucked so far into his head that he plucked each and every last little fuzzball from my old couch before I finally agreed to abandon my trusted turf for a new one.

I told Bella not to bother bringing her shoes, but she tried to sneak them along anyway.

Her hand was getting better but was in no shape to climb. The bruises were fading out to yellow and green, the swelling long-gone, yet I could tell it still hurt her. She winced sometimes when she picked up her fork and I caught her rubbing it tenderly during unguarded moments. Jasper took one look at it and agreed with me. I couldn't help but smirk at her over his shoulder, knowing all the while that he'd back me up and got to see that cute scowl of hers again.

Jasper and I hadn't gotten much time together lately, something that I sort of felt guilty about, but I shouldn't have taken that climb from him. It was bad karma even though he asked me to do it, the rock singing for him and him alone. Those kinds of siren calls are meant for one person's ears, which was why Jasper only half-heartedly attacked the Passion Pit. Fate has a way of staking her claim long before a climb has been completed and had named me in sole possession of the first ascent.

She must have surely done the same for Jasper because it was my touch that made the Delicate Place crumble.

_Hindsight is a bitch._

The point of impact was phenomenal. Blistering pain and blinding light. I thought for sure that I was dead for an entire split second, all those years of avoiding death finally catching up with me, but the rock fell clear and went headlong into the trees. I hit the mat with a solid grunt, the air leaving my lungs and my head spinning. I lay there and took an internal inventory, not moving until I was certain that nothing was broken.

I almost hit the mat again, the moment I sat up.

Bella was sprawled in the dirt, all limbs and hair and coughing.

One look at Jasper, standing ashen and paralyzed, confirmed all my worst fears.

I'd told her to stay away.

Told her countless times to let me fall, that I would crush her, but in the end it wasn't me at all. The rock that I thought might have killed me had taken her out too and I could barely bring myself to inspect the damage. I was already so nauseous, head spinning and stomach curling in on itself, that the mere glimpse of one rapidly blooming bruise on her arm burst something hot and pulsing crimson behind my eyes.

Bella made a half hearted attempt at convincing us to stay but the day was officially ruined, dipped in liquid nitrogen and tapped ever so gently with a hammer, shattering into smithereens. As we finished packing up, I watched her attempt all of four hobbled steps before I demanded to carry her back to the car. It was hard to hold a civilized conversation through the blur of red fury and I probably threatened to knock her senseless if she kept fighting me on the issue, manners be damned. Jasper shouldered all of our gear and I bent to scoop her up into my arms, the air leaving her lungs and mine when I did.

So fucking light.

And so godawful _heavy_, all at the same time.

I marched us back to the parking lot under a burning golden sunset that did nothing to clear my vision. All I could see was that rock falling in an entirely different direction and pinning Bella to the forest floor. She had her head against my chest and I'm sure my heart was beating a staccato rhythm under her ear, pumping frantically through the millions of ways a falling rock could kill a person. Head, shoulders, knees and toes.

I deposited her in the back seat and drove us home in a screaming rage of silence. Focused on the headlights, blood boiling and skin gone up in flames.

I was fucking _livid_.

Angry with Jasper for no fucking reason, as though he somehow knew that this was going to happen and did nothing to stop it.

Irritated with Bella for not listening to me when I told her to stay out of the way.

Absolutely fucking _irate_ with myself for letting it happen in the first place.

I toppled that rock. It could have been Jasper, true, but it was me and Bella was in the fucking way. Again. You would have thought my head smashing her hand had taught her something, but there she was, in the exact place she didn't belong.

_Underneath me._

I should be happy that she was concerned enough about me to even do such a thing. Should be ecstatic that she would put herself in front of a falling object that could easily fucking crush her, for me, but I couldn't make myself. I watched her pull my sweatshirt over her head and curl up on the crash pad from the rear view mirror, gripping the steering wheel hard enough to make my tendons sting.

All I could hear in my head the entire way home was Alice.

_"You take care of her out there, right?"_

* * *

I combusted the moment we got into her house.

I'd had to carry her inside, unable to watch her limp all the way to her door and deposited her at the threshold, not entirely sure if my arms could hold her any longer. I was trembling from head to toe and just about ready to split open at the seams, a feeling so similar to the numbing onslaught that followed a first ascent that I half wondered where I was.

"You should have let me fall." I growled at her, hands in my hair as I paced back and forth in the confines of her hallway. She slumped against the door and picked all the weight off her ankle, propping her foot up by the toes. When she spoke, her voice echoed through the hallway, soft and fragile.

"I was trying to spot you. I-"

"_No_! I told that you'd only get hurt! I told you to stay back. You should have listened to me!"

I fucking yelled at her. Which was the last thing in the entire miserable world I ever wanted to do.

"Why are you yelling?" Bella shrunk against the door, tucking her arm behind herself to hide the bruise that was blooming there. That vision of her pooling blood into the pine needles flashed in front of my eyes again, eclipsing her face. Alice's voice in my head again.

_"You take care of her out there, right?"_

"Because I feel fucking responsible for you!" I raged, instantly reaching my tipping point and falling over the edge. My throat was so tight I could barely breath and I wanted to kiss her so badly I could hardly remember what I was so angry about.

"Why? Because I'm your _Gabby_?" Bella spit at me, taking a hostile stance to mirror my own and I fucking hated that I made her do that.

"No. It's not that. I don't want to call you that anymore." I huffed, not wanting to ever hear that word in connection with her again. "I don't want anyone to call you that."

I closed the distance between us, not wanting to have this conversation across the length of tile between us and stood right in front of her with my chest heaving. The red was fading to pearly rose pink but I was still shaking like a leaf.

"That's why you call me Sparkles." Bella grumbled and I shook my head in agitation.

"I don't want to call you that anymore, either."

"Then what do you want to call me?"

Jesus, I didn't fucking know. I wanted to call her beautiful. I wanted to tell her that she'd spun my head around so hard that I couldn't even come up with anything even mildly fitting for the exquisite weight all the air took on whenever she was near. Wanted to call a name across a crowded room and watch her turn her head with a smile that was meant only for me.

"Girl."

My brain to mouth transference is obviously out of order.

"That's the best you could come up with? _Girl_? Not very creative, Edward." Bella rolled her eyes and I didn't blame her. The word alone was bare and bland. It was the connotation that was important.

"Not just girl. _My_ girl." It took everything in me not to choke on the words, reaching for her to ground myself, gripping her by the hip and pulling her up against me. Her body met mine in a molten fire spark of white light.

"Yours?" She whispered, and sounded just as breathless as I felt.

"Yeah. If you'll let me."

Bella flung her arms around my neck and teetered on her tip toes against me, her sore leg giving me the opportunity to hold her closer, lifting her off her feet. I came at her with an open mouth, pouring all my fear and hope and lust into her and sealing it off with my tongue across her lips. It felt so good, better than I had even thought it would and was only another example that I tended to take this girl for granted. When I picked her up to wrap her legs around my waist I didn't even remember that anything hurt, lost in a haze of sparkled lust.

Until her thigh pressed up tight against my hip and catapulted a burning bolt of pain clear into the marrow of my bones, that is.

I wrenched my mouth off hers, pressing my lips to the skin of her neck and grinding my teeth through the pain, not wanting her to let go despite the pulsing agony. I latched my mouth onto her neck, tasting salt and dust and something subtly sweet.

"Ok." Her breath blew in an lacy rush across my shoulder.

"Ok, what?" I fumbled to remember what we had even been talking about, fingers in her hips and her t-shirt in the fucking way.

Hip on fire.

Head in a tailspin.

"Ok, but you can't ever call me Sparkles again."

I groaned and clutched her closer, thumbs inching under the waist of her leggings and my knees trembling when her fingers scraped through my hair. She tried to pull my face from her neck but really only ended up digging her thumb into the oozing gouge on my temple. I hissed and she pulled her hand away, both of us eyeing the blood staining her thumb.

My vision got lost in a blur of crimson and pale skin. Dots of ruby red scattered through the dust.

Even blood lost its color as it died, edging up on ebony with its last gasping breath.

"Just fucking listen to me next time, ok Sparkles?" It took a lot of effort to keep my face somewhat reserved, to keep from shaking her a little just to make sure the message sank in. I didn't think I could take another scare like today. The thought of losing her now made me feel lightheaded and vulnerable.

Bella's face pulled into that endearing scowl.

"Hey, you-"

"Last time. I promise."

* * *

**Climb:** The Delicate Place - Spoon

**Sailing Hawks** is a boulder field near my house, chock full of climbers. ;)


	12. Chapter 12

12.

I woke up in her bed.

White sheets printed with tiny purple flowers and blinding sunlight pouring in through the window. It took me a moment to register where I was, unfamiliar surroundings and enough pillows to supply a small department store. She was gone, the other side of the bed empty but the sheets were still warm and I knew she hadn't been missing for long.

I rolled over in a fit of groggy sleep and remembered only then that my hip might be fucking broken. Yesterday came pouring back in a torrent of flooded images, all rock and blood and anger and steam and milky water pooling at our bare feet. Falling from the rock and landing in her mouth. The way she stood there in front of me, damp and warm and smelling like Rose's flowers, dripping water onto my toes from the ends of her hair, asking me not to leave.

_"Stay. Please."_

We ended up in the shower. Stroke of genius on my part, though at the time I was really only concerned with getting all the chalk and grime off of her so that I could get a proper look at her bruises. I watched her peel herself out of her clothing, finally catching a mere glimpse of her naked body as she stepped into the steam and begged my dick to just let me be somewhat decent tonight.

It didn't pay attention at all.

I spent the entire time trying to pretend that it wasn't pressing up against her thigh as I cleaned her up, having to fold my hands over my stomach when I stepped away to let her wash her hair so that I wasn't tempted to reach down and rub one out to the sight of it. Every delicious curve was there and I could already see the faint beginnings of her new muscles. Roping her arms and rising on her abdomen, laced in water and a steam.

This girl was going to be the damn death of me.

I set her on the vanity after the shower, head finally clear enough to take stock of the damage that had been done today. Her forearm was sporting a bruise the size of my hand, which meant that it stretched clear from her elbow to her wrist. I used Rose's goop as an excuse to check out her bones, moving her wrist and bending her at the elbow, waiting for a wince or hiss of pain, but nothing came. The injury on her leg was worse, but again, there didn't seem to be any damage to the bones which made me breathe a sigh of relief.

My hip, however, was surely bruised to the point of mush.

We tried to make out a few times, but never got farther than we had in the hallway. The bruise on my hip looked like a damn watercolor painting and when she tried to climb on top of me, her knee cap hit my surely crushed hip and I saw a flash of white light behind my eyes. I swore for a moment that I was going to be sick and tossed her off me, pressing my face into her sheets and letting the clean, sweet smell of her drown away the fading echos of pain.

Bella appeared in the doorway, knocking me out of my daydream in the t shirt she'd thrown on last night which barely covering _anything_ and her hair wild. She padded into the room and stood beside the bed, offering me a cup of coffee. My eyes fell to the bruise on her arm and I swallowed down a lump of something awkward. This was the first time I'd ever woken up in a woman's bed without having slept with her the night before and I wasn't entirely sure what was going on between us.

"How are you feeling?" I asked her, accepting the cup and letting it burn my fingers.

"Sore," she admitted. "You?"

"Same." I really hoped my rapidly hardening dick wasn't apparent under the thin sheet.

"Alice and Jasper are on their way." Bella perched on the edge of the mattress, hair around her elbows and her face thoughtful.

"Together?"

Bella nodded and I thought about how dejected Jasper looked last night when we dropped him off, though I had barely bothered to notice at the time. It was interesting that he'd called Alice in lieu of Emmett, but I guess that in a way, he'd found himself a Gabby too.

* * *

Alice was in a fury when she arrived. She didn't even greet us, just stomped in the door and demanded to see Bella's leg. She gasped and threw her hands over her mouth in horror which she only removed to slap me when she spotted the bruise spanning my shoulder.

She even hit Jasper, which I took to be a bad sign.

"What would happen if you were out there, god knows fucking where, and you got pinned under a rock?" She glared at Bella and I got a surge of sudden angry strength, sure in an all-knowing instant that I would never let it happen.

"That wouldn't happen." I spat and Alice narrowed her eyes at me.

"You don't know that."

"We'd move the rock. She's never out there alone." It was true. A far as I was concerned, Bella wasn't going to climb anywhere in the whole entire miserable world without me there beside her.

_Ever_.

"There are rocks even _you_ can't move, Edward," Alice hissed at me, echoing the conversation that had been haunting me.

I hated more than anything that she was right.


	13. Chapter 13

13.

I got into bed and didn't get out for almost two days.

My hip ached something awful and I just kept reliving that horrid split-second, mid-air and helpless, over and over and over until my sheets stank of it. Stuck in some awful parallel universe where nothing could ever change, except for the worst.

Every moment mired in pain and lust and confusion.

I didn't know what to do about Bella.

I was pretty certain that I needed her, somehow, and in a way that didn't only involve rocks. Certain, now more than ever, that this all happened for a reason and that the boundary between our real lives and our extracurricular ones deserved to be breached. Seeing her in the nursery had cast a whole different light, brought her to the surface and made me realize that she'd probably amaze me just as much in her everyday world as she did on a boulder.

That's when I started fantasizing about the the mundane sort of shit, the way she folded her laundry and if she sang in the shower. Did she ate on the couch or at the table? How many different colors of underwear did she have, and was her birthday in the fall, or the summer? Did she talk to her plants when she watered them? Was she allergic to avocados?

I peered through the crack in that giant dam and liked what I saw.

_A lot._

The wave of the future.

It pushed me right out of bed and into the shower for the first time since my one with Bella. Swept me into clothes and out the door. Hurtled me down the highway at warp speeds and deposited me at her door before I had even formulated a plan. I only knew that I wanted to be here.

I plucked a poppy from the next door neighbor before I rang the bell.

I really had no idea what I was planning to do, or where we were going until we were actually headed there. I fixed her breakfast while she changed into something awesomely short and practically see-through, ushering her to the car before I could change my mind and just keep her there all day. She curled up in the front seat, making that car look better than it ever has before.

* * *

The road to the fire tower was like a video game.

In the little silver beamer, that is.

Windy and twisted, full of switchbacks sharp enough to pull your stomach clear to the backseat. I let the car growl underneath me, enjoying the smooth purr of the engine which was a change from the rough, grinding growl of the Rover. Slammed my foot alternately between the gas and the brake until we came to stop dusted stop at the base of the fire tower, practically in the clouds. I thought at first that she was fighting her fear of heights when she hesitated at the bottom of the ladder, but it really only turned out to be something much simpler than that.

Her panties could not be considered clothing.

Sheer in every place that counted and lacy everywhere else.

I watched her scamper all the way to the top and disappear through the hole before I even bothered to touch the ladder myself, thoroughly enjoying the view.

And then, that was it. The moment I was supposed to breach the barrier, and I felt like I need to be touching her while I did it for some reason. It wasn't nearly as hard as I expected it to be and she agreed easily, all my anxiety for nothing. I dropped her off at home and spent the next four hours trying not to think about her.

* * *

The concerts started long ago with a volunteer position but became something that I couldn't let go of. At this point, yes, I was getting paid for it, but even if I wasn't I probably would have continued. I worked with the theater director to create the light show, timing it to a musical set list and began playing under school contracts. A grant came through last year that allowed us to incorporate vibration sensors into the theater seats and the program was steadily expanding. I played lots of easy, recognizable standard, Disney covers and lullabyes, but the challenge wasn't what I was shooting for.

My favorite part was the end.

I would bow and wave and smile at the kids for a while as they cheered before ducking backstage, finding my way to the front of the building so that I could greet them in the lobby as they exited. Some stood far away in groups, frantic hands and pointing conversations, while others would cuddle close and touch my fingers, cuffs and elbows. I let them feel my hands, the calluses on my fingers and answered their questions, every so often watching one of the blind children tap-tap-tapping back to a group of deaf ones to relay my answers in surprisingly fluent sign language.

_Life was such a tactile sport._

I found Bella in her secluded balcony, the best seat in the house as far as I was concerned. The acoustics were better in the lofted seating and while I enjoyed my own view of the evening enough, I'm sure it was even more spectacular from above. She didn't disappoint, met me with a hug and a squeal and I escorted her back to my car, trying in vain to keep my eyes off the fuckhot dress she was sporting.

Tight and short and covering far too much of her skin.

It rendered me completely unable to keep my hands to myself.

I was ready to take her in the car, dinner be damned. I pulled her into my lap and let her grind down on me with her lips to my neck and my fingers everywhere, prepared to rid her of the dress and get straight to the point. It was tight and short and did fantastic things for her ass but I'd much rather see her out of it. Just as I was fumbling for the zipper that laced up her back, a beam of light flooded over the roof of the car and Bella crouched down on top of me, huddled in my lap.

"Security guard." She whispered and the light brushed slowly across the inside of the car, windows fogged. It took entirely too long and when the guard eventually moved on Bella scrambled off my lap and into her own seat. I reached for her, intending to drag her back but she shook her head and curled up against the door.

"Take me home," she panted.

_Yes, ma'am._

We somehow made it through her door, though I barely remembered driving there. I'm sure I parked like a complete asshole. I held off on the temptation to strip her naked on the front lawn and let her close the door behind us before I was worming my hands under the hem of her dress and demanding that she take it off. I have no idea how she got it on because it took both of us to get her out of it.

Jesus christ, she was even more beautiful underneath all of it.

_Was that even possible?_

She was right when she said she'd never worn much around me up until now, her tiny shorts and sports bras barely qualifying, but there was always more fabric and less skin than I secretly wished for. Now that she had it all on display, I could barely bring myself to believe it. I tossed my bow tie into the black-hole oblivion just outside the three foot bubble of everything that mattered, her right there in the center of it, trying to tell myself to take this slowly.

That rushing through this would do no justice to the time we spent formulating it.

_That_ plan failed. We didn't even make it to the bedroom. Instead, we ended up sprawled on the living room floor, naked and locked at the mouth and I hoped that she wouldn't take it the wrong way that I'd stashed a condom in my pocket before I'd come to pick her up this evening. It had been burning a scorch mark against my ass cheek all night and I tried not to sigh in relief when she told me that I wasn't the only one hoping for this.

Something about her face when she said it banished every last shred of uncertainty.

I looped my fingers behind her knees and pulled her forward, the cheeks of her ass nestled against my kneecaps and her thighs on either side of my waist. I couldn't fucking wait to get myself in there, fingers or dick, and wasted no time sinking my thumb down into her folds, both of us shuddering. Her toes pressed insistently into my calves, breath lost, and I got her off just to fucking see it.

Once again, expectations _blown_.

I thought I'd seen beauty before. Some of the red-rock deserts that Jasper and I hiked into to climb, barren and twisted as a lunar landscape, had been eerily gorgeous. I'd gaped open-mouthed under sunsets stained unbelievable reds and golds, celestial Pollack paintings in the sky. Stood admiring the awesome lumbering grace of a giraffe for an entire day at the zoo last year and watched the ocean batter itself against the north shore of a mid-pacific island with a stunning sort of beauty. But I'd been using the word wrong all along.

_This_ was beautiful.

Watching her fall apart against the backdrop of her hair and the flowered carpet beneath her, toes still dotting a morse code melody into my legs was beautiful.

As soon as it was over, I wanted it again.

I pressed myself into her, planting my lips on her neck in case I made some totally indecent sound because god fucking dammit, what the fuck had I been doing with myself all this time? _Sex_? That hadn't been sex. All those other women, we must have just been playing pretend. The feel of this was unreal, an atom bomb dropped into my ocean and launching me twenty miles skyward.

I hurtled back to earth and cratered into the surface.

When I came-to, Bella was writhing underneath me, the bones of her hips pressing into mine until she found the sweet spot and everything around me clenched ferociously. We uttered expletives at practically the same time. Bella's into the air, mine into her skin. Fuck. I gripped her tightly with tingling fingers and thrust into her as softly as I could force myself to. It was only when I remembered how fuckawesome her earlier orgasm looked that I managed to pull myself off her.

I sat back on my heels and pulled her open, the sight of my dick disappearing into her just about toppling me over the edge far too soon. I couldn't help that my next thrust was hard and fast, slippery skin glistening and wet and flushed.

"Goddamn, Bella. That's gotta be the sexiest fucking thing I've ever seen."

I basically growled.

Forced the words out in a rough tumble that almost didn't make sense. Bella trembled from head to foot and ground herself into me, a push for every pull that only spurred me on, pressing urgently into her as though this was all I'd ever get. I set my thumb back down over her clit and rubbed her in time to each clash of our hips.

If watching her had been incredible, feeling it was like nothing else, _ever_.

They should build monuments to this sort of thing. I got a flash of the Taj Mahal, pale and grandiose, a monstrous looming statement to undying love as Bella gasped and went limp for a split second. Weightless and breathless. Skin iridescent in the moonlight and everything around my dick hugging me tight enough to make my vision go static. I held off only long enough to see every last panting second of her fall before I allowed myself the last few thrusts that I needed to swan-dive off the edge of something too deep to see the bottom of.

Holy.

_Fuck_.

I emptied myself in a wave of stinging heat that bordered right there up on pain, lungs gone solid and muscles slack. I rolled off her so that I didn't straight up crush her into the carpet and gulped air like it was watered down. My dick was twitching through its death throes against my stomach and the entirety of my skin felt just as sensitive as my ragged fingertips.

_God_, my hip was throbbing.

So fucking worth it.


	14. Chapter 14

14.

The first snow of the year came far sooner than I expected.

That was a good day. I woke up in Bella's bed to dreams of her smell lodged in my brain and wormed my way between the flowered sheets until I was face to face with her pussy. She came-to already breathless, fingers in my hair, my name in her mouth.

Best way to wake her up, _hands down_.

The entire room was bathed in the strange blueish-grey light that snow cast, and every inch of her skin was the smoothest thing my ravaged fingers had ever felt.

Yesterday had been our last outdoor climb of the year.

You could feel the shift of the seasons in the air that day, a bitter underbite to the breeze that cut just a little deeper than it had before. The forest was calm, the birds disappearing and the animals bunkering down. It meant that we'd spend the next half of the year climbing in the gyms, which I wasn't looking forward to at all.

Bella accused me of bringing her back to the Problem Queen so that I could re-live how fucking _epic_ is was to find her tumbling off that rock. That wasn't necessarily untrue. I now had a strange affection for the climb I only used to warm up on, but at the time I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I couldn't even grasp the gravity of the situation and had no idea how far off my path her presence would launch me.

It would be a lie to say that I didn't think about that first time, every time we climbed.

I trailed her through the meadow on our way back to the cars, letting her talk to me about dinner but totally stuck in my head. Her hair was down, her steps practically skipping right along with her words and I didn't care at all that I was meeting her parents tonight, even though I normally would be freaking out right about now. Instead of anxiety, the fear that her father might shoot me on sight or that her mother would think I looked too scruffy and rakish to take care of her daughter, I was being swallowed by a feeling that took me the entire way back to the car to put my finger on.

I wasn't just happy or content or comfortable. I wasn't simply awestruck or amazed or even intrigued by her.

Wasn't just in lust or love, even though I'd caught myself a decent case of both.

I was _thankful_.

Thankful that I'd stalked her that day, following a feeling of dread in my stomach. Thankful that I'd caught her, not only that first time but all the other times after that. Thankful that circumstance had brought us together, face to face.

Just fucking thankful that I climbed rocks at all, really.

**The end.**

* * *

**AN: **Thank you for all the beautiful reviews and gushing words of love, plus all the recs that have gone out in my favor. **The Fictionators**, who make me feel super special and the random lurkers who stumble across me by accident. My ego is fully inflated and ready for lift off. While Chalkward holds a dear place in my heart, I'm putting him to rest in favor of other ideas for the moment. Stay tuned. *wink*

I friggen love my pre-readers, **prettyflour** and **kikki7**. I also really love **Reds_red**, my fishy soul-mate.

**Suggested Listening:** I played Death Cab For Cutie's album "You Can Play These Songs With Chords" at least two million times on constant repeat while I wrote Chalk 1 & 2.0. _So effin' good._

_**ALSO: **_**I am in _serious_ need of a beta. If you think you're up for the task (I'm overly emotional and really friggen wordy) - apply within. XO**


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